


Burning Blue

by Kinuwan



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Angst, Because Beth has a revelation, Blue Eyes, F/M, One-Sided Attraction, Paris is made even worse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinuwan/pseuds/Kinuwan
Summary: Beth has just lost to Borgov for the second time, but when she flees up to her hotel room, it is not her defeat that hurts the most. It is the loss of something much more precious and devastating.
Relationships: Vasily Borgov/Beth Harmon
Comments: 23
Kudos: 28





	Burning Blue

**Author's Note:**

> This show has made me start to listen to a lot of old music, but not all of it from the time period it’s set in. Stumbling over ‘Crash Boom Bang’ by Roxette (1994) put this little idea in my head. It’s about falling in love again and again and it always ending in heartache, so for once I decided to go for some angst and leave it up to the reader to decide what awaits Beth in the future.
> 
> I’m also making a lot of progress on my long Bethov story, but it’s still to early to give an exact estimate of when I’ll be able to post the first chapter. I’m going to finish it first more or less so I can have a tight and steady posting schedule once I start, but more than 2/3 are done of the first draft.
> 
> Disclaimer! I own no rights whatsoever to anything recognisable in this story and make no monetary gain from this. The only profit I make is in the form of kudos and comments. Everything recognisable belong to Walter Tevis/Netflix.

Beth’s mind is on fire while her entire body feels like ice. The flight back up to her room has not registered in her mind and it seems like she had gone from looking right into blue eyes to the sun mockingly shining in through the curtains she had pulled apart before her breathless run down to meet her fate.

Who knew that blue could be such a burning colour?

Well, they do say blue flames burn the hottest and she can vouch for that now, no trouble at all. It has just burned a hole through her heart, but the ache that comes with it is more attached to realisation than to defeat. Not that she is not losing what was never hers in the first place at the same time anyway.

The fog in her mind, created entirely by her own weak indulgence in alcohol last night and pills just before the game, had made the board and its piece blurry to her, the contours fuzzy rather than clear and sharp, while simultaneously searing blue into her very soul. She had felt the heat of the colour on her for so much of the game and only dared to meet it head on a few times, because every time she did her courage faltered, her hands trembled even worse, and her heart swelled.

In Mexico City she had wanted that burn. Longed for it even. Because to her naïve little mind it had meant validation. That she was recognised as an equal by the man who ruled the world of chess rather than just being the newest upstart, yet to be determined if she would triumph her way to the top or stumble and fall down into triviality.

Naïve indeed.

This time, for the entirety of the excruciating time the game had gone on, she had wanted nothing more than for that blue to be directed at the board between them and nothing else. She had even wanted to scream it at him more than once. To tell him that he had no right to look at her with such disappointment. She did not owe him anything and who was he to expect more from her than what the world clearly thought her to be. A drunk failure whose genius was her inevitable downfall. Morphy come again, as Harry so inelegantly but poignantly put it.

Sweet and clueless Harry Beltik, who had wanted to train her and ended up supporting her through the latest trial of her crime riddled life and wanted her to love him back. But he could not handle her destructive flames, always burning inside her and always waiting for her weakness to let them come out and play. To sow destruction in their relentless path and pulling anyone close enough into the fray when she was not enough to sate them. His calmness had not been sufficient to put the fire out and just like everyone else, he had left her when his puppy love had turned to ash.

The urge to scream comes over her again, but this time it is not specific words that want to come out. There is no one there to demand of that they look away from her. That they close their eyes and ignore the truth she can no longer hide. Only a sense of frustration and helplessness that is vague and overwhelming at the same time.

And is that not just what had happened with Townes? A truth not forced from her but on her, allowed to hurt her deeply, being betrayed rather than betrayer. The first person since Mr Shaibel to take her seriously in the world of chess without knowing yet what she was capable of. And who had sought out her friendship and given her the impression of wanting even more with his charm and warm eyes. One young man walking trough a door had shattered that illusion and with nothing but a deep sense of foolishness and her heart in pieces to show for her vain hopes and dreams she had fled.

If only she could have been his literal Harry, then her own puppy love might have been allowed to blossom rather than die in agony before even a single bud had the opportunity to turn into a flower. But wishing she was a man will do nothing but lead to bitterness and chess has already given her enough of a taste of that over her gender.

Walking over to stand in the sun by the nearest window, because she still feels like ice, Beth looks out at the would outside. Cars driving by and people milling about, moving towards clear destinations she envies them. Life moving on as if nothing has happened. As if her life has not hurtled itself headfirst into a massive unmovable wall, the ensuing collision enough to leave her with a sense of detachment.

Suddenly, those cold hands she now holds up in front of her are no longer hers and she looks at them in incomprehension. Could those really be the same ones she had used to move all of those chess pieces just now on their march towards doom? Could those really be the same ones that had started to itch and burn with the longing to reach across the board and take hold of another set of hands? Another set of hands also used to march pieces, but always to victory. His victory and her defeat.

A victory that might have been within her grasp but for her own weakness. Benny had tried to both warn and train her. He had given her weeks of his time right after she had beaten him so swiftly and decisively she would have refused to speak to him for a year if the table had been turned. He had decided to see her potential while not turning a blind eye to her faults - numerous as they are – and help her to chase the former while dealing with the latter. She had hoped he would be able to help her with her heart too, but in the end, his own belonged to chess alone and had room for no other mistress.

Now here she stands, mind buzzing with all the possibilities her pieces had offered her but she had been unable to see. With no blue around, and all that water finally doing some good, the fog starts to lift and she turns away from the sun, eyes gazing up at the ceiling and playing the game she ought to have played.

She still loses.

In that inevitable defeat, the distraction of hope utterly spent, her mind returns to that not so little matter of her heart. The bed is tidy now, but she has no way of knowing if a maid has been there or if Cleo tidied up before coming downstairs, just in time to witness her miserable loss. She does remember seeing the beautiful young woman lying there on her way out, not having the time then to wake her up and ask what had happened then, and now she lacks the inclination. The blackness in her mind where the memories of last night should be is strangely soothing and she will not have to face if the loneliness that drove her down to the bar in the first place also drove her to find solace in more than just alcohol. Because Cleo, despite her glamorous exterior, is broken in her own way and the two of them can clearly only drag each other down. Better to make a clean break of it now rather than tempt a fate that already seems inclined to hate her.

The bed becomes too much to look at and she turns back to the window, hoping to find some kind of distraction in the world she is hiding away from, so long as she is safely behind glass and only an observer. Her eyes scan the street a few floors below, taking in the everyday life of everyday people once more. There is an older man walking with a cane in one hand and holding a lit cigarette in the other, a young man who walks with his hands down his pockets, pose relaxed and possibly whistling some tune judging by the form of his mouth, a middle-aged woman walking in a pair of heels so high Beth fears for her safety, and so many others. An endless stream of normal.

Then, she spots them. A little family of three. A father, a mother, and a son somewhere around eight or nine-years-old walking in the middle and held by both parents by the hand. At first it is the family she had wished so desperately for at that age, when faced with orphanhood and a bleak existence at Methuen Home, but it soon morphs into the one thing she does not want to think about - to acknowledge – because even pills and alcohol can make that ache go away.

It was nearing the end of the game when she had at long last given in and glanced over his shoulder. And there they sat, his own perfect little family. Beautiful wife always beside him to give him her support, both silently and with the words he himself did not grasp, and the boy, always well-behaved and secure in the love of his parents. The antithesis of her. But it is not the role of the child her traitorous heart longs for now.

Unable to take the scene of domestic felicity outside a moment longer, she hurriedly backs away from the window, leaving nothing but the skyline of Paris for her to see. But when she steps on something that is not carpet she swirls around before falling to her knees. It is the flowers from one of the vases that decorates that part of the room. She has no idea if either of her or Cleo had tipped it over last night and replaced the thankfully whole vase on its pedestal or they had simply decided to empty it for some unfathomable reason. Either way, the sight of them touches something within her.

White roses and what she guesses is some kind of bluebell lie on the floor, the lack of water for too many hours clear to see providing a twisted mirror of herself. Nature is such a brittle thing, she thinks and reaches out to touch the still soft petals of one of the roses. It feels like velvet. A few edges have already started to shrivel and turn brown and she imagines the red rims of her eyes have much the same effect, showing how she has already started to wilt too.

Then her cold hand starts to tremble when it moves to one of the little blue flowers. It feels even more fragile, but has kept all of its colour so far, proving itself sturdier than the supposedly mighty rose. The same way blue triumphed over the white queen many journalists liken her to. She had thought she was ready. She had thought this was the time she would triumph. Instead, just like in Mexico City, she has come all this way to face the immovable red king of chess only to lose something invaluable in the process. Something that should not have been tied to the moves on the board, but somehow still ends up being so.

His blue eyes, so calm like the rest of him, but still so sharp and expressive, had looked at her this time and seen her weakness. Seen her in all her undignified glory. The chess prodigy meant to dethrone him but stumbling over her own shadows and ending up prostrating herself at his feet instead. He had shown his infinite benevolence in keeping his distaste hidden in all but his eyes. His blue eyes that see everything.

Her heart twists in her chest and when she pulls her hands to it, pressing down on her hurt even if she knows it cannot make it go away or even lessen, the blue flower she had examined comes along, her hold on it unconsciously kept. The perfect metaphor is enough to make her double over and start to cry.

The lone tear that escaped her before she fled her latest failure is nothing to this. Because then he was still there, still within her reach. And even with their audience, including both his perfect little family and a number of reporters who would not hesitate to lay her heart open for all the world to read, she had, in that moment, wanted nothing more than to go to him. To find solace in his arms and let him soothe away the hurt he had just caused her. To reach up and kiss him so he would know the truth just as clear as it is to her now.

In Mexico City, Beth lost her mother. In Paris, she has lost her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed. 💖


End file.
